UNITED NATIONS – Amid debate over Iran’s nuclear program, the U.N. Security Council yesterday discussed the future of an inspection team charged with monitoring Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

“There needs to be a final accounting” of weapons in Iraq before the body, known as Unmovic, disbands, Russia’s deputy ambassador, Konstantin Dolgov, told reporters yesterday.

Last December, American Ambassador John Bolton urged the council to wrap up the inspectors’ work. Washington is “not sure that Unmovic needs to prepare a final report,” Mr. Bolton’s spokesman, Richard Grenell, told The New York Sun yesterday. “There was a dramatic change” since the fall of Saddam, he said. “Now that we have a democratically elected government in Iraq, we may not need to revisit the previous Unmovic mandate.”

The Russian statement on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction – dismissed as nonexistent by many at Turtle Bay – may set the stage for more cautious action on Iran, one Western diplomat said yesterday. Moscow “wants to remind everyone of the search for Saddam’s weapons before the Iranian issue comes here,” the diplomat said, requesting anonymity.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency began deliberations in Vienna yesterday, director Mohamed ElBaradei said the Iranian dossier may not be referred to the Security Council. “I am still very much hopeful that in the next week or so, an agreement could be reached,” he told reporters.

Washington quickly downplayed the notion of impending compromise. “I am not aware of any specific proposals or any specific ideas that would require or force any kind of delay in Security Council action,” a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was scheduled to arrive in Washington last night and in New York tonight. He will meet with Secretary-General Annan tomorrow morning. Mr. Lavrov is expected to brief Bush administration and U.N. officials on the state of Moscow negotiations on a joint agreement to enrich uranium on Russian soil.

Tehran insists it has the right to maintain enrichment research facilities in Iran, while Russia agrees with Europe and America that the regime must freeze all enrichment activity in its own country before any deal is reached.

Despite such agreement among Security Council members, Turtle Bay diplomats expressed concern that council referral would see Americans and Europeans – who would begin the process of enacting sanctions against Iran quickly – pitted against Russia and China. Both those countries, which could veto any Security Council action, rarely support sanctions.

U.N. inspectors charged with monitoring weapons of mass destruction in Iraq since the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War left the country shortly before the start of the second Iraq war. They never returned. Under a Swedish inspector, Hans Blix, Unmovic at its peak had 200 employees on its payroll in Iraq alone, and commanded several helicopters and about 100 Turtle Bay analysts.

Currently Unmovic is in legal limbo. Iraq, which finances the body through residuals from the oil-for-food program, has requested its dissolution. Some have suggested it might become a permanent inspection body for illicit biological weapons and missiles. Unmovic’s current staff of 38 mostly compiles files and conducts courses for future inspectors around the world.